Method

Photo credit Arnaud Granata

Method’s Ted Booth – Principal and Managing Director of Method’s NY office – recently presented at the RDV_Design conference in Montreal, Canada. Hosted by Infopresse and Grafika, RDV_Design conference is a day of inspiration, case studies, and discussions of all forms of design. Ted was the opening keynote for the conference, presenting a thought-provoking perspective on experience design based on his recent Method 10×10, “11 Rules For Great UX Design, Adapted From An Original Mad Man.” The article draws on timeless principles from David Ogilvy’s book, “Confessions of an Advertising Man.” 50 years after it was published, Ted points out the similarities between designing great, contemporary user experiences and creating great campaigns.

Ted explains: “I put together a talk about the convergence of product development and advertising. In a digital world, there is brand engagement and connection throughout a product experience. It is no longer a top-down message, but instead multiple conversations and messaging touchpoints. What is a product? The product and the marketing used to be separate, and now they are beginning to overlap. Instead of creating a pure message, you create an experience that someone uses.”

As we start moving from a world where trends in advertising are changing, the role of digital is becoming increasingly important. Budgets are now shifting from traditional advertising into digital mediums. In a 2013 survey by Econsultancy, 55% of marketers globally are planning on increasing their digital marketing budgets this year, with 39% of them planning on reallocating existing budgets toward digital channels.

Ted reminds us that the Mad Men days are over. In those days, “the way that you got a message out and created an impression was through traditional media: print, television, and radio…but all three are starting to change. The publishing world is not what it was. Meanwhile, everything is being replaced by all these screens.”

The impact this has on both marketers and product designers is massive. It also opens exciting new opportunities to engage with audiences in a more meaningful, contextual, and rich way. Ted’s presentation to RDV_Design challenges the audience to collaborate between disciplines, as product and marketing teams are both responsible for creating a memorable and positive experience for customers.

View Ted’s presentation deck to RDV_Design below.

A few months ago, we wrote wrote about how our Method alumni, Raphael Grignani and Robert Murdock, are featured in the short documentary, Connecting, filmed partially on-site at Method by Basset & Partners and Microsoft. The 18-minute documentary explores how trends in UI, interaction,
and experience have influenced culture and society.

We are excited to announce that the film is going to be screened! On June 25th,Bassett & Partners and Astro Studios will be hosting a one-night only Connecting screening in San Francisco, and a panel that will bring interactive and industrial design to center stage. The two firms are organizing a special design-centered discussion inspired by the documentary that delves into future projections for connectivity and interaction design.

Afterwards, the Q&A panel discussion will feature four prominent figures in the industry: Carl Ledbetter of XBOX, Aaron Higgins of Native instruments, Steve Mason of Obscura Digital, and Method’s former Principal, Robert Murdock, now a Creative Lead at Google Glass.

The event is a must attend for all those in the design community, especially those interested in the growing impact of interaction design. We hope to see you there!

RSVP on Eventbrite
Where: Astro Studios | 348 6th Street, San Francisco, CA, 94103
When: Tuesday, June 25 from 7:00 – 10:00 PM

Watch the full documentary below

Paul and Baratunde at SXSW 2013

Using humor in a marketing campaign is something a lot of companies want to do, but few can actually pull off. Done smartly, you can end up with Kmart’s viral ‘Ship My Pants‘ commercial. Miss the mark and risk widespread criticism and a spot on various news blogs’ “Worst Campaign Ads of the Year” lists.

Our friend Baratunde Thurston, former digital director of The Onion, comedian, and New York Times Best Selling Author, knows a lot about this. He’s the co-found of Cultivated Wit, a company that combines comedy, tech, media, and strategy to “make the tech space more creative and the creative world more innovative.”

Baratunde tackled the topic of humor in marketing in a recent blog post on the Cultivated Wit Blog titled, “PBS’s Embrace Of Comedy In Marketing Proves We Know Everything“.

In the post, Baratunde explores the hesitation business leaders have when deciding to use humor in their own marketing, and the insights he’s learned from his own experiences. Baratunde draws directly from this past SXSW, when he teamed up with Method’s Paul Valerio to discuss what people charged with “innovation” can learn from standup comedy. The principles Baratunde outlines are directly influenced by Paul’s original 10×10 piece. Read the full blog post at Cultivated Wit!

Read the original 10×10 piece that inspired the SXSW event, “What’s so funny about innovation?“

Recently, Behance Network held their two-day annual conference, the 99U. The entire mission of the conference is to focus on bringing ideas to life through action – as Thomas Edison is famously quoted: “Genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration.”

Method held the kick-off studio session for the conference with a workshop that aimed to get attendees taking ideas to action. We led participants through a 90-minute Lightning Brand Hackathon, working through potential design opportunities for IKEA and Airbnb.

We quickly broke attendees up into groups of 7-8 to dive deep into their assigned brand. The goal was to develop uniquely branded product and service experiences that engage users in ways that are authentic to the brand and true to the core brand values. Teams were assigned either IKEA or Airbnb to explore. The final deliverable was a one-minute elevator pitch for that product or service that the team might deliver to the CEO.

The first part of the workshop focused on articulating attributes using various stimuli to generate both literal and abstract ways of expressing the brand. Then, each team built on specific product or service extension opportunities and evaluated them against the brand attributes to determine if the proposed solution was on point with the brand.

The selected solution was storyboarded and then summarized for each group to present. In 90 minutes, teams generated product or service solutions around bespoke furniture and food offerings such as the official IKEA furniture hacking community, IKEAhacks.org, an interactive diary of a Airbnb host that gives visitors “keys to my life,” and a network of “local chefs” that invite traveling guests for authentic, homemade meals.

After the kick-off workshop at Method, myself and our attendees headed over to the conference, held at the Lincoln Center. Throughout the duration of the two days, the conference maintained an incredible energy with thought-provoking discussions around how to become more action-oriented and persevere through the creative process. Experts from all walks of life shared their experiences: social/behavioral psychologists, startup founders, brand gurus, authors, educators, and designers.

After it was all over, three major takeaways emerged that resonated strongly with me.

1: Feedback is important for more than just building a good product. It helps you persevere through the darkest times.

For many speakers what kept them motivated during challenging times wasn’t a blind passion, but a constant remainder that their work was having some, big or small, impact in the world. And the best way to see that was by getting feedback from users.

Jane ni Dhulchaointigh, the founder and inventor of sugru, talked about staying motivated through a rough patch by sending samples to her friends and family and requesting that they send in a photo of themselves using the product. Seeing her product in action gave her a sense of pride, joy and responsibility to get the final product out to the world.

2: It’s not about building awesome products, but building products that help people be more awesome.

Every product idea is born out of a need, superficial or deep. But sometimes the vision for addressing that need can get blurred by the pursuit of perfection during the creative process. The result is a product that makes sense to the one who created it, but not to those who would benefit the most by using it.

For example, Ramit Sethi, author of a NY Times bestseller and a dedicated personal finance blog, talked about a personal investment guide offered by the Wall Street Journal. Although written by investing experts, the guide was way too complex to the average American. Because there was a mismatch between what the creator considered as an “awesome product” and what the user needed to become more awesome in managing their money, the product became irrelevant for many.

3: Being action-oriented is less about tactics, and more about the mindset.

The topic of fear came up consistently throughout the conference. Mainly, creators talking about the importance of looking beyond users’ needs to gain a deep understanding of their fears and concerns.

For example, Josh Reich, CEO and co-founder of Simple, an intuitive digital personal banking solution, had observed that people think they need complexity in tools that help manage their finances. But after digging deeper into the users’ minds, he realized that their fears boil down to simpler things like carelessly spending way more than they can afford. To address the latter, Simple incorporated a feature that tells the user how much money it is “safe” for them to spend at a given point in time.

The 99U Conference was a valuable escape from everyday life to get fully immersed in thoughts that inspire reflection and realization. I left both inspired and ready to bring these learnings to practice at Method.

Leading global digital creatives and strategists from will be joining London’s tech community at this year’s Digital Shoreditch Festival May 20th – 31st, for a series of interactive exhibtions, showcases and presentations around the future of innovation and business.

Taking place at a number of premiere venues in London, the conference will be dedicating each day during the full festival week to discussing and debating various issues affecting companies and brands worldwide.

Method Principal David Eveleigh-Evans is scheduled to present on Digital Shoreditch’s Future Brands day on May 22nd alongside a diverse lineup of leading product innovators to explore opportunities and threats facing communications and advertising for the world’s most forward looking and successful brands.

Join us and the hundreds of design and tech innovators at Digital Shoreditch! Register for Digital Shoreditch before April 15 for 50% off!

There are so many reasons to love Aviary’s Photo Hack Day. Free food and beer, awesome API’s, and thousands of dollars in prizes and money. And if you attend the weekend-long coding marathon this weekend, you’ll also get to meet and work with the Method San Francisco team!

As one of the in-house design firms for the weekend, our team will will be consulting with Hack Day teams of talented developers, helping them build applications using web and mobile photo API’s. The teams will compete to create the most inspiring and innovative apps, aiming to win big prize money, cool tech gear, and the respect of their peers in the startup community.

The 4th in its series, this weekend’s Photo Hack Day is being held at Facebook’s Headquarters in Menlo Park. Are you attending? Let us know in the comments!

Read more about Photo Hack Day here.

Since its launch in 2008, Internet Week NY has grown to become one of New York City’s biggest gatherings of design, innovation and tech communities – celebrating the intersection of digital culture and business.

This year, IWNY will take place from May 20-27 to explore how technology has disrupted and revolutionized every industry from food to fashion, to healthcare to education. Method is in the running to join the conversation to be featured on stage, with our presentation The Experience Tells the Story.

The Mad Men era of advertising has passed. But what does advertising and marketing mean in this new age where there is no such thing as a “traditional” agency?

Today, a brand’s communication and engagement strategy is no longer a separate and distinct practice from the design of a product or service. The two are intertwined. The product is the marketing, and the marketing is the product.

This panel, hosted by Method Principal Ted Booth, will challenge how both marketers and designers approach the development and growth of brands, products, and services. We will bring together both sides of the advertising and product worlds as well as practitioners that sit at the center to answer questions around what it takes to create and grow a successful brand and its products and services.

Help us #makethestage at IWNY and vote for our panel!

Method spent a busy weekend at SXSW Interactive, teaming up with comedian, writer, and founder of Cultivated Wit, Baratunde Thurston, exploring the design innovation process – asking “what’s so funny about innovation?”

Saturday evening, Baratunde joined Method Principal Paul Valerio for a session to explore the parallels between comedy and design.

The session was close to capacity as Baratunde and Paul took the stage for a full Q&A asking what design leaders and innovators can learn from the deliberately counter-intuitive comedy industry. The session exposed how successful innovations, like successful comedy, is both simple yet complex in targeting an audience to make relevant and emotive connections to translate a brand’s value.

Take the session online, we challenged people to tweet questions. ‘Read more’ to check out Paul’s answers to some of your questions below.

No Admission After 8 (NAA8) is an innovative approach to DJ dance events, aimed at incorporating a blend of varying music genres with an immersive digital-physical experience to create an atmospheric, audio narrative.

Launched by Director of Interaction Design, Alexander Grunsteidl, NAA8 will be held next Friday, March 8th at the Village Underground in Shoreditch London. DJs and set designers will be collaborating to create a unique musical experience – passing through 5 musical moods – Walk, Pulse, Bounce, Shine and Breathe, synchronized to an immersive light show:

The journey starts in near darkness with an ambient soundscape leading to a scene of shadows moving from classical music to dance. As the music on one of the best sound systems in London intensifies, the space will be defined by a low ceiling of pulsing light planes. An intense fog of bright light will introduce the climax.

The show is produced by a collaboration of DJs and set designers with a shared love of creating magical experiences.

Get your tickets to NAA8 here. Be sure to follow NAA8 on Twitter (@no_AA8) for updates and announcements.

Take a listen to the 7 minute music sketch below giving an impression across the whole event.

What’s so funny about innovation? Here’s a chance to find out–

Visit our event page on Flavorpill. Just by clicking on the star, you are automatically entered for a chance at winning 1 free day pass to SXSW Interactive!

Catch Method’s official SXSW Q&A with Baratunde Thurston, “What’s So Funny About Innovation?”

The winner will be announced Monday, March 4th.